This Is How The Republicans Took Over Texas

It was a gradual takeover, with the minority party trending
upward for several years: George Bush was elected governor in
1994, Republicans took over the state Senate in 1997, and by 2001
the party was just four seats away from taking a majority in the
House.

The resulting 2001 legislative redistricting maps would cement
the state’s shift from blue to red.

Harvey Kronberg, the editor of the Quorum Report, says that
while the shift was inevitable, Republican leaders, helped by
Congressman Tom DeLay, helped accelerate it in the 2002
elections.

“Obviously there was some gerrymandering, but the state was
clearly trending Republican and the demographics were working on
their behalf,” Kronberg says.

The genesis of that final push may have come when DeLay dropped
by Democratic Speaker Pete Laney’s office in 2001. Kronberg says
that meeting let Republicans know that the only way their party
would get a majority in the Texas congressional delegation was to
get rid of Laney.

“You can argue that that was the predicate for everything that
happened afterward, when Laney said he wasn’t going to be
cooperative on congressional redistricting,” Kronberg says.

A new House map and an influx of campaign funds — some of which
were eventually deemed illegal — led 88 Republicans to be elected
to the House in 2002. Tom Craddick was elected the state's first
Republican speaker since Reconstruction. Craddick says the new
majority carried responsibilities and freedoms many Republicans
had never experienced, which led to a few problems during that
2003 session.

“For over 100 years, you didn’t have control and you didn’t have
a lot of input,” Craddick says. “All of a sudden you have control
and everybody’s got a program. Everybody’s got a factor they want
put into effect. And so you kind of weed through and say, ‘We
can’t do that’ [or] ‘We can do this.’”

“Most of the people that carried the major legislation had never
passed a major bill,” Craddick says. “Many of them had never
passed anything but local bills.”

One example of that inexperience surfaced at the end of the
session. When bills headed to conference committees to reconcile
differences between House and Senate versions of a bill, Craddick
often had multiple committees meeting in different parts of his
apartment in an effort to help with the
negotiations.

“My wife, Nadine, came home after an event and said, ‘What’s
going on? There are people everywhere in the apartment,’”
Craddick says. “And I said, ‘Nadine, you know more about
conference committees then most of them. Dig in and help with one
of them.’”

Kronberg says the inexperience also showed in how quickly some
bills were passed, sometimes with little understanding of what
was in them. That includes passage of bills that gave new powers
to Texas’ traditionally weak governor.

“The appointment process is more direct to boards and
commissions,” Kronberg says. “The ability of the governor to
reach into boards and commissions — where the true administration
of government takes place — is more profound. Then there’s a
whole series of mechanical things that were passed in a massive
government-reorganization bill.”

Kronberg says Republican inexperience also showed in some of the
key legislative committees. More experienced Democrats were
either voted out of office or relegated to the background, and
eager but “green” Republicans took control.

The GOP leadership also had problems getting business-centric
lawmakers to get out of their comfort zone and tackle other
topics. Craddick says that was a problem, especially when trying
to fill out the House committees focused on health care.

“No members wanted to do it. No Republicans wanted to be on those
committees. No Republicans wanted to be chairmen of it,” Craddick
says. “We had a real hard time. I had to sit some members down
and say, ‘You know this is a major issue in the state. We’ve got
to be able to do it.’”

The new majority also had to contend with a multibillion-dollar
budget deficit. The hole was filled through program cuts, fee
increases and some accounting tricks. But there were no outright
state tax increases.

Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson
says that budgetary road map established in 2003 has directed GOP
policy ever since. Over the years, he says, this has led to less
money for state infrastructure, health care programs, and public
and higher education.

“They are far more oriented towards stopping bad things from
happening — from their perspective — than causing good things to
happen,” Jillson says. “They don’t have a positive agenda in the
sense of [making] improvements to education or access to health
care, transportation, the environment or any of the other major
policy issues.”

Republicans argue that throwing money at a problem isn’t a
sustainable solution. Craddick says the changes that began in
2003 have guided the state in the right direction.

“I think there were some great changes made,” he says. “Probably
some mistakes were made, but over all I think that the state’s
better off and in better shape because of having the Republican
control.”